Alison Hagen

WRAC Communications

Developing Departmental Strategy

Tags: UX Research, UX Design, Content Strategy

Timeline: August 2023 — May 2024

Background

Michigan State University’s Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures (WRAC) hired me to lead a department-focused communications team in news, social media, and website initiatives. Outside of project management, I primarily focused on WRAC’s website initiatives. WRAC is a department of eighty faculty and services over 10,000 students per academic year. It takes as its focus education across rhetoric, professional and public writing, experience architecture, and first-year writing. The stakeholders for this project were department administrators and faculty; program-related graduate and undergraduate students; and incoming and prospective students. 

Throughout my process, my goals were to develop and improve the user experience through accessibility, consistency, and sustainability. The following case study details my research and solutions development processes to improve WRAC’s website as such.

Role

I served as project manager of WRAC’s web initiatives. This included leading web-based research and designing new web experiences.

Process

WRAC wanted to maintain and improve their web presence. In order to understand the scope of the website and possible leverage points, I engaged in a variety of research methods, including a landscape analysis, content inventory, sitemap and card sort, and stakeholder interviews.

Landscape Analyses

The landscape analyses focused on navigation, drawing connections between similar university departments. The first landscape analysis researched the navigation of seven university departments, including WRAC. The main finding was WRAC had a hidden research page in comparison to other departments that devoted an entire website section to research.

The second landscape analysis investigated the research sections of seven university departments. This informed the structure of our content and design.

Content Inventories

I conducted two content inventories. The initial content inventory catalogued data based on webpages existing in WRAC’s website navigation. The second content inventory catalogued every webpage existing in the website’s content management system. The main findings were unnested URLs, hidden published pages, and inconsistent naming conventions.

Stakeholder Interviews

My team shared findings with WRAC’s administrative team and recommended solutions. We collectively decided to prioritize development of a dedicated research space and a redesign of graduate student information. We also spoke with current graduate students to understand their experiences locating information on the website.

Outcome

After I compiled my research, I was left with a list of action items to directly improve WRAC’s website. While I could not address every issue during my time as project manager, I passed the list on to the next project team.

The following sections detail solutions that I addressed with department administrators and my team. 

Centering Research as a Departmental Identity

Research is a core part of WRAC’s identity. Creating a dedicated research space on the website promotes this identity across department and university communities.

Research from the landscape analyses and content inventories found:

  • Research areas, faculty interests, and research groups were common webpages;
  • WRAC’s research centers and groups had no web presence; and
  • WRAC’s hidden research page focused on publications and research areas.

Based on the research, my team developed four concept pages: “Faculty by Research Area,” “Presentations and Publications,” “Scholarly Awards,” and “Research Centers and Groups.” The images below depict early iterations of “Research Area” and “Research Centers and Groups” wireframes. My team designed the wireframes with the intent of WRAC promoting its departmental identity. Faculty, research groups, and publications could have better visibility. We workshopped wireframes with each other and consulted the administrative team for feedback.

Faculty by research area mockup, showing research areas as primary headings with relevant faculty listed beneath each area.
Figure 1. My first wireframe presents “Faculty By Research Area.”
Screenshot of a Research Areas page mockup, with a brief introduction and two subsections for different research areas.
Figure 2. A revised wireframe combines my team’s ideas to create a new “Research Areas” page.
Mockup of research centers and groups, showing a brief introduction followed by names of research groups as headings, with brief overviews of the groups and a list of relevant faculty.
Figure 3. This wireframe showcases “Research Centers and Groups,” specifically giving space to two underrepresented research groups, The Cube and WIDE.

Resituating Graduate Programs

The “Graduate” section of WRAC’s website served as a pilot of design choices my team wanted to create across the entire website. The content inventories detailed complex consistency problems in information architecture. Stakeholder interviews showed students wanted to learn about involvement opportunities and locate degree information. Based on these research findings, I determined revisions should focus on two items:

  • Creating consistent website structures, and
  • Updating and creating content to reflect recent changes to the graduate programs.

I collaborated with the Director of Graduate Programs to design and write revisions. We developed new information architecture to better reflect users’ expectations of web systems and created content to better support users’ goals.

Designing for the Next Team

Throughout my time in this position, I researched, planned, and developed solutions for WRAC’s website. While I was only able to address information architecture and two content revisions, I created revision plans for the other sections and shared them with the incoming communications team.